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A Lonely Universe

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Re: A Lonely Universe

#81

Post by hoseja »

abhishekjha wrote: post #51
fleddr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. For an optimist, we might one day colonize Mars. Next, getting out of our solar system is incredibly unlikely as the first habitable destination in our own galaxy is just so far away. Say we stretch our optimism and do make it. Now the colonization of the Milky Way starts. It's a 100,000 light years to the other end. You'd be a completely different species by the time you arrive. Say you achieve that (you wo…

>The only path would be to become a machine instead, slowly replacing biological parts with superior silicone. Until nothing biological remains. Reproduction has to be intact. But I do agree. We as a species are not fit to these interstellar or intergalactic travels. It has to be dominantly machines.

No it doesn't; if you replace the blind captain with a seeing one.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#82

Post by WalterBright »

hoseja wrote: post #78
WalterBright wrote: post #74

We owe it to the universe to send out interstellar probes loaded with micro organisms to seed interesting planets. The notion that we have to sterilize all the interplanetary probes just so we don't "infect" other dead planets is just silly. We should have dropped a bag of life into Saturn's atmosphere, instead of a sterile probe.

Why? What will thousand years of delayed seeding do? It's very dumb to smear our poop onto other planets before we thoroughly investigate them.

It'll get things started thousands of years earlier.

There isn't any life on them. More and more investigations yield more and more nothing. The people who think earth's life is some sort of cosmic malignancy will never be satisfied. We should be doing our best to seed the Sol system with life, while we can.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#84

Post by brabel »

Animats wrote: post #61
lubujackson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third option is that everything is simply too far apart and any detectible transmissions are either too faint or buried behind all those massive fusion furnaces. For instance, if our best Earth tech was pointed at Earth from a distant star, how far away would we be able to detect our own traces of life? We know that life is "a little rare" at least, but there is a huge range of rarity where life is everywhere acr…

Everything is simply too far apart. That's very likely. There are only two known systems with possibly habitable planets within 40 light years.

Not to mention that when we talk about other galaxies, then distances are on a whole different scale again. While travelling to other stars takes "only" a few thousand years, to go to another galaxy you might need several hundred million years with any technology we can currently even imagine.

Even if intelligent life is rare enough that it only appears once on a single galaxy every several billion years, we're still talking probably millions of possible civilizations, though each almost completely out-of-reach of each other.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#85

Post by brabel »

ncmncm wrote: post #19
elorant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the universe might be too young for life, and we're one of the first. The further you go back in time the more violent events like supernovas you'd find which would make the universe a very hostile environment for life.

A galaxy is really a pretty dangerous place for organic life. One supermassive black hole merger in the same or nearby galaxy, a biggish black hole merger within 10,000 light years, a magnetar hiccup within 500 ly, or a workaday supernova 5 ly off might be enough to sterilize a whole solar system. There is no guessing how many times life has been wiped clean that way. The sooner our descendants can get the hell out o…

I think we are in a relatively safe corner of the galaxy though... IIRC there's no cosmical existential threat we know of within the next billion years or so, and the kind of cataclism you're talking about would be the kind of thing we should already be able to predict millions of years in advance.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#86

Post by hoseja »

WalterBright wrote: post #82
hoseja wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What will thousand years of delayed seeding do? It's very dumb to smear our poop onto other planets before we thoroughly investigate them.

It'll get things started thousands of years earlier. There isn't any life on them. More and more investigations yield more and more nothing. The people who think earth's life is some sort of cosmic malignancy will never be satisfied. We should be doing our best to seed the Sol system with life, while we can.

But those things take millions of years at least and we barely know how to fling bits of foil-wrapped garbage at the other specks of dust around our star and seem to be rapidly improving still. I'm no Red Martian but we really shouldn't have the confidence to contaminate other worlds yet. I'm not saying we are likely to find another life in the Solar system but there might be other unknown-unknown phenomena we shouldn't blindly rob ourselves of.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#87

Post by WalterBright »

hoseja wrote: post #86
WalterBright wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll get things started thousands of years earlier. There isn't any life on them. More and more investigations yield more and more nothing. The people who think earth's life is some sort of cosmic malignancy will never be satisfied. We should be doing our best to seed the Sol system with life, while we can.

But those things take millions of years at least and we barely know how to fling bits of foil-wrapped garbage at the other specks of dust around our star and seem to be rapidly improving still. I'm no Red Martian but we really shouldn't have the confidence to contaminate other worlds yet. I'm not saying we are likely to find another life in the Solar system but there might be other unknown-unknown phenomena we should…

> But those things take millions of years at least

Perhaps. But we may not be spacefaring for very long. Now's the chance.

We've been exploring Mars for 45 years now. No life yet. As I said, the people who regard life as a malignancy will never be satisfied. There's always a deeper hole to look in.

> contaminate

Earth life isn't "contamination".

> unknown-unknown phenomena we shouldn't blindly rob ourselves of

Instead we'll blindly rob ourselves of the opportunity to spread life into a lifeless universe. How incredibly sad.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#88

Post by Scarblac »

api wrote: post #37
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how there could ever be intergalactic travel.

Theoretically if you could travel very close to the speed of light time dilation would make the trip fairly short. Of course it’s one way since it would take hundreds of thousands to millions of years for everyone else. If you came back you would be returning to a different geological epoch. Of course the energy requirements are insane and would require some kind of physicists nightmare propulsion system like antimat…

> Of course the energy requirements are insane and would require some kind of physicists nightmare propulsion system like antimatter rockets. Lose reactor containment and you are instantly converted into plasma and gamma rays. If you hit something the size of a dust particle it will destroy your spacecraft.

And, this one spacecraft needs to be able to slow down, have the telescopes and equipment needed to identify exoplanets and decide they are suitable, have the means to travel all the way there, and have everything aboard to start a complete new viable colony on some unknown planet. It probably needs to bring all the energy for the first few millenna in batteries. That must mean a huge spacecraft, and there also needs to be some way to land it all on the planet, hopefully with all the pieces close to each other. Et cetera.

The engine that got all that close to light speed is just a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#89

Post by hoseja »

WalterBright wrote: post #87
hoseja wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those things take millions of years at least and we barely know how to fling bits of foil-wrapped garbage at the other specks of dust around our star and seem to be rapidly improving still. I'm no Red Martian but we really shouldn't have the confidence to contaminate other worlds yet. I'm not saying we are likely to find another life in the Solar system but there might be other unknown-unknown phenomena we should…

> But those things take millions of years at least Perhaps. But we may not be spacefaring for very long. Now's the chance. We've been exploring Mars for 45 years now. No life yet. As I said, the people who regard life as a malignancy will never be satisfied. There's always a deeper hole to look in. > contaminate Earth life isn't "contamination". > unknown-unknown phenomena we shouldn't blindly rob ourselves of Instea…

If you let air into my high vacuum electron microscope I will not be passing moral judgement on the air but will nonetheless be unable to study my specimens.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#90

Post by Arelius »

lubujackson wrote: post #24
Causality1 wrote: post #2

Either intelligent life is rare in the universe or there's something that happens to it that prevents it from what we envision as the future of our own species, i.e., colonizing and spreading among planets. Maybe 99.99% of species ruin their own climate before getting off-world. Maybe they all decide it's happier living as hunter-gatherers. Unless we're alone, there is some fate that's common to all intelligences and…

The third option is that everything is simply too far apart and any detectible transmissions are either too faint or buried behind all those massive fusion furnaces. For instance, if our best Earth tech was pointed at Earth from a distant star, how far away would we be able to detect our own traces of life? We know that life is "a little rare" at least, but there is a huge range of rarity where life is everywhere acr…

What I don't see being brought up often.. So, the universe could be infinite right? Or at least many orders of magnitude larger than the "visible universe"?

If that's the case, the occurance rate of life could be very very small, and we are still practically gaurenteed to exist, along with many (infinite) more life.

But it's entirely possible that they are all over a "visible universe"'s distance away. Which with an expanding universe, would mean that we could never meet or even observe them.

In some ways, that's maybe more lonely, or at least sad, than being entirely alone.

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